by Knox, Abby
So ridiculous only a drunk asshole would agree to this. For fuck’s sake. He carefully peeled back the tape and took a look. It was a heart with the letter “C” in it. The heart looked like it had gashes in it and blood flowing out. The way the “C” was inked, calligraphy-style, was the most telling part of all. That was his ink. Gavin had given himself a tattoo on his own hip.
“That explains how a tattoo artist would agree to do ink on a drunk asshole,” he said aloud.
But the mystery remained, why could he not remember the most important parts?
He remembered most of the bachelor party. Club hopping all over the French Quarter, then riding the party bus back to their neighborhood. He vaguely recalled running into one of his employees, Manny, at Bobby’s Wolfpack Tavern, but could not recall the conversation. That was about the time things started to get fuzzy in Gavin’s memory.
The upside was at least he knew his shop and his equipment were clean.
Full marks for that, dipshit. Now go find your clothes.
He stood up and leaned against a tree to shake the cobwebs out of his brain.
He looked around, but his clothes did not show themselves.
It wasn’t the first time he’d ended up naked in the woods with no sign of his clothes. Whenever he wolfed out, there was no telling where his clothes would end up. Usually, the pack shifted together above the bar at Bobby’s flat, and their clothes ended up in a heap. Some shifter wolves, like his friend Penelope, or Pen, as she preferred to be called, always stripped down in an orderly fashion and neatly placed their folded clothes in Bobby’s dresser. He and his boys mostly just got naked, howled at the moon, and ran like hell through the alleyways and pocket parks of the city. They just loved to get going and run, balls to the wall.
The recent change in hunting grounds had turned out to be even better at satisfying the urge to run and hunt. When Ash’s wolf had nearly ripped out some dude’s throat for putting his hands on Rosemary, the pack had convened and agreed to move its hunting grounds to the outskirts of the city. They needed more wild and less populated places to hunt if they were going to prevent any more damage — or prevent having their family secret revealed.
A romp in the woods was probably how Gavin had ended up passed out, naked, and clueless. Best-case scenario, the drunk wolves had felt themselves losing control of their wolfy urges, employed what remained of their brain cells, and high-tailed it out of the city.
Gavin followed the trail back out in the direction of the parking lot, hoping maybe he could call someone to pick him up. If not, he’d just have to walk.
About a tenth of a mile down the trail, he saw his undies and jeans, but there was no sign of his shirt or shoes. The good news was his smartphone was in his jeans pocket. Yes! Surely there would be some clues about last night in his phone.
Unlocking the screen revealed no new text notifications. He felt himself become a little bit disappointed but not at all surprised. Drunk people were not the most reliable in letting their friends know where they were.
At the top of the list of text conversations, there was a contact just called “C.” Perhaps the “C” who was inked on his hip? A strong possibility, Einstein.
Tapping on the convo, he saw it was all 100 percent from him to her, no replies.
Huh.
He looked at the messages he had sent to this C. The first one was sent at 2:34 a.m.
Hey, this is Gavin. Friend of Ash. I heard you were a bridesmaid. I think you’re cute.
Fuck, what kind of a dork had he become? “I think you’re cute”? He may as well be passing notes in the fourth grade asking girls to “check this box if you like me-like me.” Reading his drunk missives made him cringe, so he skimmed them only for clues.
Then came this charming one about five minutes later:
I saw you dancing on the bar. Do you need a ride home?
Okay, points for being a gentleman. And at what point did the sex happen? And was she okay?
He figured it would have been at some point between 2:37 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. because the third and last text he had sent to her said,
Had to take off. Better for your safety. Be back as soon as I can. DO NOT MOVE. Please reply that you’re OK.
He looked at the time. It was now 8:45 a.m. Gavin trudged up the trail and eventually came to the parking lot. No car. No keys. No shirt. Not even any shoes anywhere. How had he gotten here?
He sent her a text just before calling for a rideshare.
I feel like a jackass. I’m not totally sure what happened, but I need to see you so we can sort this out. Please stay wherever you are. Are you at my place? Let me know.
Before he could pull the trigger on the rideshare, he heard a low rumbling sound and the squealing of tires. Ash’s GTO was roaring across the lot and screeching to a halt right in front of him.
“Get in.”
“Listen, man, I blacked out and I need to find this girl.”
Ash cut him off. “Get in the car.”
Gavin obeyed. What choice did he have? He must have reeked of blood and alcohol. And also: no shirt or shoes.
Ash, however, looked freshly showered and was as chipper and charming as ever. How did he always manage to do that?
“Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“I do not, and it does not matter. We gotta go find Bobby.”
“Bobby’s not at his place? Dude, the party ended at his bar. He lives above the bar. Why would he not be there?”
“I already checked, he’s not there. He took off kind of surly last night…this morning…whenever it was. I’m just worried about him. You know how he gets.”
Gavin was getting frustrated. Bobby was a grown-ass man who could take care of himself. “Okay, look, let’s just get to my apartment and see if this mystery girl is there. Then we’ll go find Bobby.”
Ash shook his head. “No, man. If she’s out there, she’s hungover as shit. Give her time to pull herself together. No girl wants to see you first thing in the morning after a bachelorette party.”
“Well, she was the one dancing on the bar, if that gives you any clues.”
Ash rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Look, man, everyone took turns dancing on the bar last night, it was a whole thing, I think.”
“Where are we going then?”
Ash smiled. “To get you some coffee and then an ass-whooping.”
Chapter Three
Chastity, 9:15 a.m.
So how had she made it to 22 with her virginity intact?
Coming from a family of shape-shifting panthers did put a damper on dating. Few “normal” people were aware of the curse of the DuChamp clan, and the ones that were aware of it were bound to secrecy. Overprotective fathers notwithstanding, navigating these tricky conversations with prospective dates was not something any young panther looked forward to. One slip up, one accidental magical shift while in the middle of an aroused or emotional moment, and everyone could end up injured, at worst. At best, such an encounter could mean a date being coerced into signing non-disclosure agreements at an attorney’s office. None of these scenarios encouraged much romance.
The DuChamp clan elders would probably still be arranging their children’s marriages to their second and third cousins once removed, if that kind of thing weren’t so frowned upon these days. That had been the case with her daddy and mama. Oh, it hadn’t been anything illegal, but her grandparents wanted to keep the panther blood in the family and had to go back in the family tree about three generations to find a distant cousin from a feuding branch of the family to be a suitable match for their son.
Chastity’s father, Theodore DuChamp, and his brother Lionel, the daddy of the bride-to-be Rosemary, when they weren’t monopolizing the shipping industry all over the Gulf Coast, spent most of their energy trying to use their daughters for the benefit of their businesses. Or so it seemed to their daughters.
And there was another barrier entirely to Chastity’s dating life: the purity ring. She didn
’t like wearing the ring; she’d been coerced into it as a young girl. Chastity and her daddy were the poster people for the city’s annual Purity Ball. Over the years, it had become as much a rite of passage for young girls as the coming-out parties. Much like the old-fashioned country club debutante balls, the Purity Ball involved fathers presenting their daughters to the public at a dance. However, instead of handing their daughters over to a suitable boy of good breeding, the Purity Balls involved no boys at all. Instead, daughters would receive a ring from their father. The ring served as a symbol of his protection and as a symbol of the girl’s promise to save herself for marriage.
As she had gotten older and wiser, she’d once asked what would be the point of a Purity Ball full of girls if some of the girls were lesbians? Also, what about the trans folk? Where did they fit in the whole purity culture? She never got any answers about any of that.
As a young girl, Chastity had loved these daddy-daughter dates in the beginning. Besides new moons—on which the Baton Rouge DuChamps would gather in the woods to shapeshift into their panther form and hunt together—the Purity Ball was always a day she could count on her dad being there for her. Otherwise, Theodore was a very busy man.
In this way, Chastity was jealous of her cousin Rosemary. Uncle Lionel was also busy and ruled with an iron fist, but he was always around.
Over time, Chastity started to hate the Purity Balls. Especially as she grew older and desired nothing more than to raise hell with her friends and chase boys. But every year until she was 18, she put up with this promise to remain celibate and attend the ball, just to keep her daddy happy.
She still never dared to have actual sex, however. Fear of pregnancy, STDs, magical curses, and damnation all loomed large in a young girl’s life.
Instead, Chastity’s outlet took the form of drawing and illustrating comics, which she secretly published on an anonymous blog. She had exactly 65 adoring fans and counting.
And now, here she was, doing a bona fide walk of shame. Except she wasn’t sure where she was walking from or walking to.
If Chastity was grateful for one thing about her strict debutante upbringing, it would be learning to walk in high heels with ease. She might not have her sunglasses, she might not have a working phone. Chastity also was hungry, thirsty, and barely functioning under the weight of a raging hangover. But it was a gorgeous June morning, and no inaugural walk of shame was going to make this girl stumble down the streets of New Orleans. She was going to strut, goddamnit.
Well, not precisely strut. Maybe she would shamble a little bit.
On the way out of that drab apartment, she had come across this mysterious guy’s shirt and motorcycle boots on the stairs. She knew instantly they were his; they had his scent all over them. That scent, the one she’d picked up all over her body, all over the bed, all over everything. She had brought the shirt and boots back up and neatly placed them on the mat in front of his door.
Chastity arrived at an unknown street corner in an area of New Orleans she’d never been to before. She looked around and swallowed down the nervousness creeping up, that panic she remembered as a child when she’d once lost sight of her mother while shopping at the mall. Everything looked strange and desolate.
You’re okay, Chas.
Now she just needed to focus on getting herself a coffee and some juice for her phone, and she could call Rosemary’s driver for a ride back to the mansion.
Spying a hip little storefront with an incredible aroma wafting out through the door, Chastity found her bearings. She still had no idea where she was, but she at least had something to take off her to-do list in her quest to discover the details of the night before.
She plopped down her daddy’s platinum on the counter with confidence and relief. Theodore might be a prude and weirdly obsessed with protecting her virtue, but damn if his money didn’t come in handy when she was in a bind in New Orleans. And she always got herself tangled up in something when she visited her New Orleans cousins.
Chastity glanced around the place. There were band posters on the walls, and tattooed and pierced customers sipping small cups of very black coffee. The music playing over the speakers sounded to her not at all like the jazz and blues she would hear at any of her favorite spots in the French Quarter. Where in the hell was she? Was she even in New Orleans at all? Well, soon she’d be caffed and juiced up enough to find out. And then, wafting in and out of the coffee aroma was something else. A familiar scent among all of the unfamiliar things that surrounded her. A man’s scent.
Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart rate picked up. This scent was triggering a memory. It was him. The same scent that was stuck to her skin.
Chastity closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds. She saw tanned flesh pressed against her breasts. She could almost feel her face nuzzling against a man’s neck. A bearded face with long hair brushing her cheeks. A scent of mandarin and spice. He felt so close and real when she closed her eyes, it overshadowed anything that had happened at Rosemary’s bachelorette party. Had there been a stripper? Maybe. Burlesque show? Likely. Comedy show? Bar hopping? Probably. That was all vague and hazy, like an insignificant dream compared to the event that had followed, and not just because of the alcohol. She popped open her eyes and looked around but did not see anybody who resembled this G from her photos or her memory. But G was here—or had been here recently.
Then she realized the barista, a female with dyed white hair and ice-blue eyeshadow, was staring at her quizzically. “Ma’am, this card has been declined.”
Chastity blinked herself back to reality.
“Excuse me? What does that mean, declined?” Batting her eyelashes and playing dumb usually worked. This did not work on college-age students with no real vested interest in whether or not she succeeded in purchasing a coffee.
“Declined? It means I’m supposed to call…”
Chastity snatched away the card and ran out. No fucking way was anybody calling the credit card company. That would only result in the credit card company notifying her father, and she didn’t want any of that kind of attention right now. Not when she had a mystery to solve.
Except now, she was back on the street with no coffee and no money.
There was nothing for her to do but close her eyes and try to find that scent again. The mystery man.
Finishing school, beauty pageants, and high teas will not teach a girl how to track a scent. So it was a good thing she had one other thing nobody could take away: the animal instincts of a panther that never really left her when she was in her human form.
Chastity was going to find her man.
And then she was gonna slap him upside the head for getting himself a coffee and not getting any for her.
Chapter Four
Gavin, 9 a.m.
“Ash, you seem like you’ve already had enough coffee for ten people.”
Ash nodded as he strode into their favorite coffee shop. “I have.”
The young barista behind the counter said, “Oh goody. A Boudreaux and my tattoo artist, sans shirt.”
She seemed more sarcastic than overjoyed to see the shop’s most frequent customer and biggest tipper, accompanied by the artist who had done both of her sleeves.
Gavin ordered himself a large black coffee with an extra shot of espresso.
The barista cocked her head and smirked. “Red eye?”
Gavin stared back at her. He did not know technical names for coffee. He knew technical things about tattooing, and that was about it. “Sure,” he said. “That.”
The barista turned and got to fixing his beverage. He and Ash scanned the place, but there was no sign of Bobby. “Hey, darlin’, you seen Bobby in here this morning?”
She stared. “No. And I told you to stop calling me that.”
Ash looked hurt. “Darlin’, all I did was call you darlin’, ‘cause you are a darlin’!”
Gavin grunted. “Ash, come on, let’s go.” His friend might be a modern fellow, but
his manners needed some work.
Ash persisted by opening up his phone and showing her a photo of Bobby. “You do remember him, don’t you? Reddish hair, tall? Boyish good looks.”
The barista sighed. “I heard you were getting married. Are you marrying Bobby? Because you sound pretty sweet on him.”
Ash puffed up his chest. “And so what if I am?”
Gavin had half a mind to bolt and abandon his friend, but then he had a brainstorm. His phone. Shit, of course!
He quickly took it out and opened the photo app. But no dice. No photographic evidence in his phone of last night’s girl whatsoever. Not a single selfie. On one hand, maybe that was a good thing, as it cut the chances by half that there might be compromising photos of himself out on social media without his knowledge. But who could say if last night’s partner had snapped any shots, and who knew what she was capable of doing with them?
Still, he had a good feeling about her and believed she couldn’t be too far away. He ordered a coffee for her, whoever she was.
Then Gavin texted her as he waited and while Ash continued to banter with the unamused barista.
“I got you a coffee. I’m just guessing here, but I’m assuming you like lattes? I got you one with whole milk. I hope I guessed right. You seem like a whole milk kind of girl, I don’t know why.”
He finally dragged Ash out of there and left a large tip for the barista.
“Listen, man,” Gavin said when they were out on the street. “Bobby can take care of himself. Leave it alone. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the brunch today at the mansion?”
Ash laughed. “Dude, I’ve been up all night. I showered two hours ago. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I do need to make sure Bobby’s at the brunch and also Vann. We were all supposed to sleep at my place last night and go over to the mansion together. Including you, nitwit. I can make excuses for Vann. People will excuse celebrities for just about anything. But the rest of you are making it pretty damn hard to keep me in good graces with this family.”